Thursday poetry video: Emily Dickinson

Bonus

Wednesday poem from 3 Quarks Daily — go there for more, including the original language version.

Called Poetry

…………—In honour of Aldo Pellegrini

Called poetry is everything that closes the door on fools, yes.
Everything, on the other hand, that opens
the world’s vision and secret to the innocent,
to those who stake all on nothing,
those who don’t hoard, don’t look after themselves, don’t lie in wait
or calculate, and still are always on the verge of finding
as if by mere chance love, death, life itself even.

Called poetry is everything that pulls our feet
after the impossible. That which reveals the other side of things,
and sings at the end of disaster for no reason.
That which mercilessly blows you outside your being
or silently invades – an alien tide –
the inside until drowning your eyes.

Called poetry is everything that suddenly bursts in the word,
without warning and without logic. That which cannot be explained
properly to the smart, to those who are always right.

Called poetry is everything that comes back after exile,
defeat, the fears. The light that one day returns to the closed rooms
of old memory: the ancient, recovered simplicity of days.
The wind that revives a flame in the night. What survives us,
what always remains to us this side of the wound, the deepest loss,
like an ultimate, silent, hidden strength.

by Pedro Arturo Estrada
from Oscura edad y otros poemas
publisher: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellín, 2006
translation: 2010, Laura Chalar